Yeah, I believe in Santa

although when I think about it, Santa is clearly an old-fashioned paternalistic symbol that harkens back to when men were white knights on horses swooping in to save women--with a marriage proposal usually--although now women don't need that kind of saving...women don't even need a husband to have a child anymore: 40% of all children in the US are born to single moms. Back to Santa. I used to get God and Santa Claus mixed up when I was a kid.  They were both big judgemental guys in the sky, although Santa was a lot more generous with immediate tangible rewards and his criteria for being good were much more transparent.  Kind of like my mom's. God's rules were murky and a lot depended on who was telling the story AND what edition of the rule book you were reading. Then it turns out that there are even entirely different books. So there are more guys in the sky to worry about. All men. People are always getting in fights over whether or not women should be allowed into the various priesthoods, but I never see anyone saying, you know, why don't we just create a female god who isn't as belligerent as a male god. Who isn't all hung up on rules and punishing you "to teach you a lesson."  We don't learn lessons, we're a flawed species. We keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over as if we have pierogies for brains.  I can, however, see God as SuperMom. After a long day of cleaning up your physical and psychic messes, and you ask for yet another special dispensation, SuperMom just closes her eyes and says, "Whatever."  Because---well, you wore her out--but, she really only wants you to be happy. She's your MOM! Isn't that a great God?  It's only guys in the sky who insist on extremely uncomfortable and humiliating trans vaginal probes, re-arranging female anatomy to suit whatever crack-pot interpretation of the rule book they follow, and pushing gays off cliffs. Maybe those guys in the sky should fight out it out amongst themselves without involving us, let SuperMom God bake some cookies and clear the deck for Santa and his bag of presents.  Because we were good.